The Galaxy Z Fold 8 doesn't feel like another routine hardware refresh. Instead, it marks a shift in how Samsung thinks a book-style foldable should fit into everyday life. Rather than chasing slimmer dimensions or shaving off a few more grams, the company has focused on fixing the biggest weakness of previous Galaxy Folds: usability.
That decision is most obvious in the new passport-style form factor. The wider cover display finally feels like a complete smartphone screen instead of a placeholder until you unfold the device. I found myself replying to messages, reading articles, navigating with Maps and catching up on emails without automatically reaching for the larger display. When I did unfold the phone, it was because the task genuinely benefited from the extra space, not because the outer screen felt restrictive.
That subtle change completely transforms the ownership experience. Closed, the Fold 8 is comfortable enough to replace a traditional flagship. Open it, and it becomes a capable tablet for multitasking, editing documents or simply enjoying content on a much larger canvas. It's the first Galaxy Fold where both displays feel equally purposeful.
The Fold 8 isn't flawless. A dedicated telephoto camera is still missing, and a few software quirks remain. Even so, those compromises are easy to overlook because Samsung has finally built a foldable that works around the user, rather than expecting the user to work around the foldable.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Review: Design
Samsung has spent years refining the Galaxy Fold by making it thinner, lighter and tougher, but the Galaxy Z Fold 8 feels like the first time the company has questioned the design itself. Instead of treating the narrow cover display as an unavoidable part of a book-style foldable, Samsung has completely reworked the proportions. The result is a passport-style device that's shorter, considerably wider and, in my experience, far more intuitive to use.
That redesign changes the way you interact with the phone from the very first day. Previous Galaxy Folds almost encouraged me to unfold them for everything beyond a quick reply. The Fold 8 doesn't. I comfortably replied to WhatsApp messages, cleared emails, browsed Chrome, navigated with Maps and even typed lengthy messages without ever feeling restricted by the outer display. It brought back memories of the BlackBerry Passport, although Samsung has refined the idea into something that feels natural rather than experimental.
Ironically, the biggest difference isn't the cover display itself. It's how often you stop thinking about it. I only unfolded the Fold 8 when I genuinely wanted more screen real estate for editing articles, reviewing documents, multitasking or watching a film. For the first time, the two displays complement each other instead of one compensating for the other.
The Fold 8 also feels exceptional in the hand. At 201g, it's surprisingly light for a device that doubles as a smartphone and a tablet, while its 9.7mm folded and 4.5mm unfolded profile makes it far easier to carry than its dimensions suggest. The wider chassis improves grip, the weight distribution is excellent, and even extended reading sessions never became tiring.
Samsung may market the Fold 8 Ultra as the productivity-focused model, but I never found the standard Fold lacking. Whether I was reviewing spreadsheets, editing Word documents or juggling multiple apps, it felt just as comfortable as it did while streaming Netflix or catching up on YouTube.
The engineering deserves praise too. The new Armour FlexHinge feels solid and precise, the Flex Titanium display structure makes the crease easy to ignore, while Gorilla Glass Victus Ceramic 3, Gorilla Glass Victus 2, the Advanced Armour Aluminium frame and an IP48 rating inspire confidence when using the phone every day.
Samsung has also shown admirable restraint with the styling. My Lavender review unit looked understated yet premium, while Graphite, Cream and Pistachio offer equally attractive alternatives. My only real complaint is the prominent camera bump, which makes the Fold 8 wobble noticeably whenever it's placed screen-side up on a table. Apart from that, this is easily Samsung's most complete and thoughtfully designed book-style foldable to date.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Review: Display
The Galaxy Z Fold 8's displays aren't impressive simply because they're bright, sharp or packed with flagship specifications. Samsung has been doing that for years. What makes this phone stand out is how naturally the two displays complement one another. For the first time on a Galaxy Fold, I never felt like one screen existed purely to compensate for the other.
That change begins with the 5.5-inch cover display. On paper, it's a WUXGA+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel with a sharp 428ppi pixel density, an adaptive 1Hz to 120Hz refresh rate and Vision Booster for improved outdoor visibility. In reality, it's the wider passport-style aspect ratio that makes all the difference. I found myself replying to WhatsApp messages, working through emails, browsing Chrome, navigating with Google Maps and reading long articles without once feeling rushed to unfold the device. Even typing lengthy messages felt surprisingly comfortable. More often than not, I finished what I was doing, locked the phone and carried on with my day.
Unfolding the Fold 8 still feels rewarding, but now it serves a different purpose. The 7.6-inch QXGA+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X inner display, with its 1848 × 2448 resolution, 403ppi pixel density and adaptive 1Hz to 120Hz refresh rate, isn't there to rescue a compromised outer screen. Instead, it becomes the display I reached for whenever I needed more room to work. Editing articles, reviewing documents, comparing webpages and multitasking across multiple apps all felt far more comfortable than on earlier Galaxy Folds. The revised proportions also make video content more enjoyable, with smaller black bars helping films and YouTube videos make better use of the available screen.
Display quality is exactly what I'd expect from Samsung. Both panels are exceptionally bright, colour accurate and wonderfully fluid, while Vision Booster keeps them readable even under harsh sunlight. HDR10 and HDR10+ support also ensures HDR content looks excellent, despite the absence of Dolby Vision.
The stereo speakers deserve credit too. They produce impressive volume, surprising bass and clear vocals for a device this slim. My only criticism is that their positioning favours the left side in landscape orientation, making the soundstage feel slightly lopsided during gaming and while watching films.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Review: Performance
Flagship smartphones have reached a point where outright performance is rarely a concern, and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is no exception. Powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, the phone is available with 12GB of RAM on the 256GB and 512GB variants, while the 1TB model comes equipped with 16GB. As expected, it has more than enough headroom for demanding workloads.
What stood out during my time with the Fold 8 wasn't how fast it was, but how consistently smooth it remained. Whether I was editing photos, exporting videos, jumping between dozens of Chrome tabs or making use of Galaxy AI features, the phone handled everything without hesitation. One UI 9 also plays a big role here. Split-screen multitasking, floating windows and drag-and-drop between apps feel fluid enough that they quickly become part of your everyday workflow instead of features you occasionally show off.
Gaming performance is equally strong. BGMI and Call of Duty: Mobile comfortably hovered around 118 to 119fps during my testing, with no noticeable frame drops even in longer sessions. The larger inner display also makes the Fold 8 an excellent device for emulation. I spent more time than I'd care to admit revisiting classic NES and PSP titles, and the combination of flagship hardware and a spacious display made for a genuinely enjoyable handheld gaming experience.
If benchmark scores matter to you, the Fold 8 comfortably crossed 3.1 million points in AnTuTu, while Geekbench returned 3,517 in the single-core test and 9,752 in the multi-core benchmark. Samsung has also redesigned the internal cooling system with additional graphite to improve heat dissipation. Although the phone became warm during extended gaming sessions and long hours outdoors in Delhi's summer heat, I never experienced meaningful throttling or any slowdown that affected real-world performance.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Review: Cameras
Samsung has taken a refreshingly restrained approach with the Galaxy Z Fold 8's cameras. Rather than trying to match the Fold 8 Ultra feature for feature, it focuses on getting the essentials right. You get a 50MP primary camera, a 50MP ultrawide and 10MP selfie cameras on both the cover and inner displays. On paper, it may not look as versatile as some flagship rivals, but in day-to-day use, I rarely felt limited.
The primary camera does most of the heavy lifting, and it does it exceptionally well. Photos are packed with detail, dynamic range is excellent and Samsung continues to strike a good balance with colour reproduction. Images look vibrant and lively without appearing overly processed. The ultrawide also deserves praise for maintaining consistent colours and exposure, making it easy to switch between the two cameras without the final results looking noticeably different. Portrait mode remains reliable too, producing clean edge detection in most lighting conditions. I also found Samsung's default shooting mode to be the better choice, consistently delivering brighter and more balanced images than the full-resolution mode.
The only area where I genuinely felt the Fold 8 fall short was zoom photography. Without a dedicated telephoto camera, anything beyond 2x starts to lose fine detail. Samsung's image processing does a respectable job of controlling noise and sharpening, but there's only so much software can do when optical hardware isn't there.
Video recording is another highlight. The Fold 8 supports recording at up to 8K 30fps and 4K at 30fps, 60fps and 120fps, while optical image stabilisation keeps footage from the primary camera impressively steady. Beyond image quality, the folding design itself unlocks features that conventional smartphones simply can't match. The cover display can act as a live preview for your subject, the rear cameras double up as excellent selfie cameras, and tools like Dual Recording, Picture-in-Picture video and Galaxy AI editing make the Fold 8 feel like a genuinely capable pocket content-creation studio.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Review: Software
A foldable is only as good as the software that ties its two displays together, and this is where Samsung continues to stay comfortably ahead of the competition. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 ships with One UI 9 based on Android 17, and while it doesn't radically overhaul the interface, the experience feels far more cohesive on the Fold 8's wider layout.
The improvements are most obvious when multitasking. The wider inner display gives apps more breathing room, making split-screen far more practical than on previous Galaxy Folds. I often found myself researching while writing, keeping Slack open beside my inbox or comparing multiple webpages simultaneously. Although the Fold 8 can comfortably handle three apps at once, I usually settled on two, which struck the right balance between screen space and usability. Samsung's taskbar, floating windows, drag-and-drop gestures and app pairs are so well integrated that they quickly become second nature rather than features you actively think about using.
AI also plays a bigger role this year. Alongside Google's growing suite of AI tools, Samsung's Galaxy AI introduces genuinely useful additions such as My FanCam, which intelligently tracks a selected subject in a video and creates a ready-to-share cropped clip. Smaller refinements, like independent auto-rotate settings for the cover and inner displays and the dedicated Google Search bar, also make day-to-day navigation feel more intuitive.
It's not entirely flawless. I occasionally came across apps that struggled to transition smoothly between the cover and inner displays, and I still think Samsung could do more with Flex Mode on this wider design. Even so, no other Android foldable currently delivers a software experience this mature. Add Samsung's promise of seven Android OS upgrades and seven years of security updates, and the Fold 8 remains the software benchmark for book-style foldables.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Review: Battery
Battery life ended up being one of the Galaxy Z Fold 8's biggest strengths. Despite using a relatively modest 4,800mAh silicon-carbon battery, it comfortably lasted a full day of heavy use. Whether I was multitasking, streaming videos, taking photos, navigating or constantly replying to messages, I usually finished the day with around 15% charge remaining.
Charging speeds top out at 45W wired and 20W wireless. They're no longer class-leading, but they proved fast enough for everyday use. My only real complaint is that Samsung still hasn't adopted built-in magnetic wireless charging, something I'd have liked to see on a flagship foldable.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Review: Verdict
Samsung didn't just refine the Galaxy Z Fold 8; it redefined what its standard book-style foldable should be. The wider, passport-style form factor completely changes the ownership experience, making the cover display practical enough to function as a proper smartphone while preserving the advantages of a large inner display whenever you need it. It's a deceptively simple change, but one that has a profound impact on how the device fits into everyday life.
The rest of the package leaves very little to complain about. The displays are exceptional, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 delivers effortless flagship performance, battery life is dependable, and One UI 9 continues to offer the best software experience on any Android foldable. The cameras may lack the versatility of the Fold 8 Ultra's setup, but they remain more than capable for the vast majority of users.
Starting at ₹1,79,999 for the 12GB + 256GB variant, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is undeniably an expensive device. I still wish Samsung had included a dedicated telephoto camera and built-in magnetic wireless charging. Even so, those omissions do little to overshadow what Samsung has achieved here.
If you've been waiting for a book-style foldable that feels natural, practical and uncompromising in everyday use, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is the easiest recommendation in its category. It doesn't just raise the bar for Samsung's foldables; it sets a new benchmark for the entire segment.
